John Armstrong: Underdog tag suits Brash

One of Don Brash's endearing qualities is that when he fields a tricky question, he tries to answer it. The academic in him means he cannot stop himself - even when he has been told by advisers to stick to the prepared script.

Such frankness can spell trouble: he gets sidetracked; he is forced on the defensive; where there was clarity, suddenly there is confusion.

Yet he sounds the more sincere for telling it as he sees it.

And voters like that.

They listen to him because they believe he, unlike other politicians, is not feeding them glib responses to questions they have not asked.

Of course, Brash is also living off the stacks of credibility he earned at the Reserve Bank.

Voters listen to him because they respect him, even if they did not agree with him, for sticking to his guns when pressured from right, left and centre to relax the fight against inflation.

That he is still a long way short of being the conventional politician is a mixed blessing for National, however.

His political inexperience means he will be flying by the seat of his pants for the next eight or nine weeks leading up to election day.

Brash has to make all the right calls with little or no time to think them through - something even politicians long in the tooth find difficult in the heat of a campaign.

Yet his inexperience has the benefit of making him the underdog.

That makes things tricky for his opponents. While they will argue that his inexperience means he consequently lacks the political judgment required of a Prime Minister, attacking the underdog may unleash a backlash of public sympathy.

Leadership could be the critical factor in the election should Labour and National be running neck-and-neck in the polls going into the final week, at which stage Brash and Helen Clark will be going head-to-head in the final round of televised leaders' debates.

Winston Peters - who is intent on gate-crashing those debates by engineering another spectacular leap in the polls - is not holding back in slamming Brash as a political novice bereft of judgment.

But then, over-the-top personal attacks from Peters are par for the course.

Labour will tread more warily. It retains the option of an all-out assault on Brash's political competence. But Labour thinks he will self-destruct under the pressures of the campaign and do the job himself.

His attack on Grey Power for supposedly favouring New Zealand First will give Labour every confidence he will.

Labour will be further gladdened that with the official campaign still to get under way, Brash has already had to clear up media-generated confusion over National's stance on the anti-nuclear law and reducing GST.

Those misunderstandings were not necessarily Brash's fault, but it must worry National that they keep occurring.

They also followed an example of Brash digging himself into a hole by excluding gays from his definition of "mainstream" New Zealanders.

Instead of being inclusive, Brash sounded discriminatory.

The prevailing view within National was that this slip-up did not undermine the party's claim to speak for the "mainstream", a strategy designed to marginalise Labour as the apologist for extreme lobbies, noisy minorities and the politically correct.

It would have gone unnoticed by the great bulk of voters. Those upset by Brash's categorisation would not be voting for National anyway.

However, Labour has no shortage of incriminating statements from Brash's past to paint him as the inflexible economic ideologue whose views are anything but mainstream.

That attack will be reinforced by a "nagging doubt" strategy reminding voters of statements Brash has made since becoming leader on things like nuclear ships and sending troops to fight in Iraq alongside the Americans.

The message is that voters cannot put any trust in Brash's real agenda having changed - whatever he might say.

National has already tried to defuse this potent line of attack. Brash's speech to his party's conference last month was notable for an admission that he had once held left-wing views and voted Labour.

The intent was to show he is not only adaptable in his thinking, but has a strong belief in social justice even if he no longer shares Labour's methods for achieving it.

Brash will also remind voters that Clark sat in the Labour Cabinet that initiated the structural reform of the economy which National continued through the 1990s, and she has by-and-large left those reforms intact.

He will want to keep talking about the economy. When it comes to judging the relative merits of the two leaders, voters give more weight to Brash when it comes to understanding problems in the economy, according to the 3News-TNS poll of leadership qualities.

But not by much.

Clark comes out the easy winner in key categories such as "is a capable leader", "would be good in a crisis" and "has sound judgment".

In contrast, Brash has a high inexperience rating. But that may be a case of voters stating a fact, rather than a criticism.

With Clark, voters know what they are getting.

If they are unsure that Brash is up to doing the top job, then his performance in the campaign will be crucial in allaying doubts.

What matters in campaigns is what happens on television. And because Brash is no stranger to television, National is pretty confident he will perform well.

He will not be fazed by Clark in the leaders' debates. His underdog status reduces the pressure of expectations. He can be the only real winner. Clark can be the only real loser.

Outside the debates, however, the spotlight will be on Brash as never before. With the media tracking him round the clock, Labour is punting he will be found wanting.

While voters may forgive the occasional blunder, a series of mishaps on the campaign trail will be difficult to ignore.

So far, the slip-ups have been relatively minor - but they are accumulating.

It is an adage that a lengthy political apprenticeship - Clark had been in Parliament for 18 years before becoming Prime Minister - allows you to make your mistakes before anyone notices.

The risk for National is Brash will make his in the full glare of an election campaign. But that was the gamble the party knew it was taking when it installed him as leader.